Université de Montréal

“We wanted to provide mentors and mentees with practical frameworks to help them think about and rethink their careers in a constantly evolving professional environment.”

The Université de Montréal Alumni and Donor Network runs a large mentorship program bringing together several hundred Université de Montréal graduates every year, both mentors and mentees, around issues related to career entry, professional development and career progression.

As part of its program, the Network wanted to offer an interactive conference on career management skills in order to help participants better understand transformations in the world of work and develop practical tools to navigate and manage their careers over time.

How can professionals be supported in a world where jobs are constantly evolving?
How can participants develop their ability to adapt, make career decisions and remain active agents in their professional journeys within an environment shaped by uncertainty and technological change?

Turning career management skills into a concrete tool for career development

This conference was built on a simple observation: today, the future of work is no longer a distant or abstract reality. Technological transformation, digitalization and artificial intelligence are already profoundly reshaping jobs, ways of collaborating and the skills expected across many sectors.

The objective of this intervention was therefore not simply to help participants “plan” their careers, but rather to help them develop genuine career management skills. In other words, resources enabling them to understand changes in their professional environment, identify their motivations and competencies, explore opportunities and build relationships that support their professional development.

The conference was designed as a hybrid format combining lecture and participatory workshop in order to encourage participant engagement and practical appropriation of the content. The audience included both early-career mentees and more experienced mentors, which required designing content accessible enough for the former while still offering more strategic insights for the latter.

Translating research into directly actionable tools

The content of the intervention was grounded in research on career management skills, career adaptability, meaning at work and contemporary transformations of work related in particular to artificial intelligence and the digitalization of occupations.

The intervention was structured around four major dimensions: knowing why, knowing what, knowing how and knowing who. Each dimension was explored through concrete examples, practical exercises and moments of personal reflection allowing participants to immediately connect the content to their own professional situations.

The conference began with a reflection on the evolution of occupations and on the transformations already visible in participants’ daily work tasks. The discussions highlighted that the future of work does not simply mean changing jobs, but rather seeing one’s job continuously evolve and having to constantly learn.

Participants were then invited to reflect on what gives meaning to their work using the CARE model (contribution, autonomy, recognition and evolution), before mapping their competencies and identifying the skills they wished to further develop in the future. Concrete resources were also presented to help participants monitor changes in occupations and identify weak signals of transformation within their sector of activity.

Finally, a last section focused on professional networks and the ability to build a strategic professional ecosystem. The objective was to demonstrate that networking is not simply about maintaining a list of contacts, but rather about developing a real infrastructure of opportunities, information and collaboration.

My research-action approach unfolded as follows :

Exploring together

An initial exchange with the mentorship program coordinators helped identify the specific challenges faced by the target audience: young graduates transitioning into the labour market, professionals reflecting on their career paths and mentors seeking to better support mentees in their career thinking.

This phase led to the choice of a highly interactive format combining theoretical input, chat discussions, individual exercises and collective reflection.

Shedding light through research

The intervention was built on scientific research related to career management skills, career development dynamics, employability and meaning at work. The concepts mobilized were translated into accessible language in order to help participants better understand the mechanisms currently shaping professional trajectories.

Co-constructing with initiators, actors and users

The conference was designed as a space for experimentation where participants were encouraged to draw from their own experiences to build their reflections. The exercises proposed invited them to reflect on their motivations, competencies, development needs and professional networks.

The exchanges between mentors and mentees also created particularly rich intergenerational perspectives on transformations in the world of work and evolving career paths.

Measuring the impact and effectiveness of the project

The intervention was recorded so that it could later be shared with members of the mentorship program. Participant feedback particularly highlighted the concrete, accessible and reflective nature of the conference, as well as the balance between scientific insights and directly actionable tools for career reflection.

Why a research-consulting expertise was relevant for this mission

Today, supporting careers is no longer only about helping people choose a profession or write a résumé. It increasingly involves helping individuals develop capacities for adaptation, reflection and career self-management in a constantly changing professional environment.

For this mission, the research-consulting approach made it possible to transform sometimes complex scientific research into concrete, accessible and directly usable tools. It also enabled career guidance issues to be approached not only from the perspective of the labour market, but also through the lenses of meaning, motivation and individuals’ ability to build professional paths aligned with their aspirations within an ever-evolving work environment.

Feedback

Lindsay-Dora Germain, Head of Volunteer Engagement, Philanthropy and Alumni Department, Université de Montréal

“The team greatly appreciated the clarity and relevance of the concepts presented, as well as the way Élodie Chevallier was able to immediately connect them to practical applications. Participants highlighted the quality of her workplace-based examples and her strong command of the subject matter, which made the presentation both dynamic and accessible. Her interactive and structured approach significantly enriched the experience offered through the Université de Montréal alumni mentorship program.”